The race committee, without a stopwatch

Why

A club committee is three volunteers, a stopwatch and a line seen from afar.

Judging a start by eye, from one end of the line, means guessing what happens two hundred metres away. Recalls are shouted, missed, disputed. And the results are copied out by hand afterwards, with the errors that implies.

Electronic tracking systems exist, but they need a device per boat, a subscription and someone to run them. For a club fleet on a Wednesday evening, that is out of reach.

• Without

  A start judged by eye, a time taken by stopwatch, results copied out by hand — and no track to settle a protest.

• With Navigatek

  Every crossing measured to the metre and timed to the tenth, results that compile themselves, and every boat's track, still there to replay months later.

What

The whole race committee, in a phone.

It detects; it does not rule. A boat over the line at the gun is flagged “OCS?” — nobody has looked yet — and the committee lifts or confirms the flag, with its reason written into the report. No race already sailed is ever altered.

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• The clock

  One start or two, countdown to a tenth, spoken calls at one minute and at the gun. The fleet is tracked by GPS, each boat from its own phone.

• The line

  Crossings are measured, not estimated: signed distance to the line, to the second, with a tolerance set from the real spread of two GPS units — 8 m, because below that you would be penalising noise.

• The marks

  Buoys and lines are set from the phone's GPS or by hand, renamed, and pushed to the whole system at once. A line too short is refused before it can disqualify the entire fleet.

• The record

  GPS tracks, times to a tenth, distances to the line, decisions and reasons: everything stays, and nothing is rewritten. A race report still reads straight months later.

At the club

A club race evening, with Juge.

On a Wednesday evening, the committee is made of volunteers and the fleet of the club's boats. Here is what Juge takes off their hands.

1. Before: at the dock

   The committee writes the course in one line (1-2-1-2-1) and sets the line and marks with the phone's GPS. Each crew opens Navigatek Bord on its phone: two minutes per boat, no tracker to hand out.

2. During: on the water

   The countdown is spoken aloud, on the committee boat and on every boat, with a line alarm on board. At the gun, Juge measures each boat's distance to the line and marks early starts « OCS? »: the committee confirms or clears them with one click. The results update during the race.

3. After: at the clubhouse

   The results are published, the report is ready to copy for the members, and each crew finds its track and the analysis of its race — speed, manoeuvres, time spent leading.

Juge is free and coming soon. Navigatek Bord, the crew's app, is free too: it gives the countdown, the line alarm, speed, heading and the provisional result.

How

Four stages, from setting the course to the report.

1. Set

   The committee sets the line and marks with the phone's GPS, standing on the spot, or by coordinates. The course is written in one line — 1-2-1-2-1 — and checked as it is entered.

2. Track

   Each crew sends its position from its own phone, with a free app. A network gap on the lake? The phone keeps its fixes and resends them; nothing is counted twice.

3. Measure

   At the gun, the system computes each boat's signed distance to the line. It handles one start or two, boats returning behind the line, laps and shortened courses.

4. Publish

   Results stay current during the race. At the end: a report ready to paste, the whole fleet's tracks, and an analysis per boat — speed, manoeuvres, time spent leading.